Grey Glasgow 2024, Darker States 2025: Discovering Colour in Wet Scotland as Preparation to Manage Living in the United States

Shortly after retiring as a public health physician in Philadelphia USA, I spent the summer of 2024 in Glasgow studying large portraiture at the Glasgow School of Art and making a set of paintings mostly of West End tenements and other architectural features of the city. The summer was cloudy, cold and wet – but I continued to see a brighter and more colourful environment as time went on. People in particular - the cone
on the Duke of Wellington and slogan: People Make Glasgow made a big impact on my perceptions of community and living well. My technical skill with painting evolved over this time to include more colour to represent grey, and more intense underpainting tones and bolder brushwork.

I returned to the United States shortly after a ridiculous election outcome replacing the executive and legislative branches of federal government with extreme conservatives.
Since early in 2025, this administration has enacted orders to undermine human rights for women, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ individuals, to dismantle scientific institutions that conduct medical research, ensure environmental protections and promote public health, and violate the Constitution of the United States with respect to powers including the
use of the military. Integrity seems to be lost as these actions increase power to benefit the ultra-wealthy at the expense of our marginalized and impoverished communities.
 

My response has been to produce art that focuses on the people in the United States who are being negatively affected - remembering the slogan and attitudes of people in Glasgow that I came to admire last summer. Time traveling drag queens, seniors, dilapidated buildings, and messages that derive from the community spirit expand as themes in my work. “Go Birds” for example is a unifying Philadelphia chant heard at
public events that derives from the entire community’s support of the champion Philadelphia Eagles American football team. Though an evolving story in unsteady times, grey Glasgow of 2024 has shaped my pushback to life in the darker United States of 2025.